


Blinding White

by wanderwings



Category: Rurouni Kenshin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:46:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23461897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderwings/pseuds/wanderwings
Summary: Like a beacon of light, she waits for him by the shore.
Relationships: Himura Kenshin & Kamiya Kaoru, Himura Kenshin/Kamiya Kaoru
Comments: 5
Kudos: 28





	Blinding White

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the live-action adaptation.

The boat inched to the corpse-strewn shore. Blood bloomed on the sand where the dead lay, lost to the struggle. These were lives lost to a man who had delusions of grandeur, a man who was so powerful and so _mistaken_. The battlefield nearly choked him, the familiarity of the sight. War didn’t have a place in the new era, and yet here it was. Unwelcome.

From the distance he could see a figure in white, shining like a beacon, calling out to him.

And Himura Kenshin remembered what he had been fighting for since the beginning: it was for a new age that would know and realize peace. A new age that would find glory in the simple life―of laughter, of shared meals, of laundry flapping in the breeze, of fireflies and cicadas, of smiles, of _family_.

The woman clad in white kimono, standing at the edge of shore, she was his reminder of everything he had always hoped for.

When the boat nudged shallow sand, Kenshin clambered out, his muscles protesting in pain. Not surprisingly, Sagara Sanosuke still had the energy to help him walk. They slowly shuffled towards dry land. Each movement was painstaking and required effort. His legs felt liquid underneath him, and he was frighteningly close to buckling.

And then her voice: “ _Kenshin._ ”

He looked up at her through the curtain of hair that had fallen across his face. Kamiya Kaoru was smiling at him, with a smile that snagged at the curious, pounding thing in his chest. The mid-afternoon sun bathed her face in a muted glow, and he couldn’t help but think, _Kaoru-dono is alive. She is alive._

He had thought she was dead. He had woken disoriented in his master’s cabin, his head heavy with dead weight, all those graves he had digged as a child that fateful day, when he suddenly recalled with piercing clarity: Kaoru falling into black water and him following her into the abysmal depths. How long had he been there? How long had she been gone? Reality sunk in just as the bile rose up his throat, and he had the urge to claw his insides out. He had gotten her involved in the whole mess. She should’ve just stayed in Tokyo. He shouldn’t have stayed there too long…

The thought of her gone ripped open a visceral wound in his chest and again, _again_ , it was his fault. He couldn’t protect the most important person to him. It was his curse.

Gentle, callused hands grasped his arm and the touch awoke him. This woman was real, and she was so close that his nerves were singing.

“Let’s go home, Kenshin,” Kaoru murmured, the smile still on her lips.

 _You are my home_ , Kenshin thought. His voice was nowhere to be found, perhaps had dropped somewhere into the pits of his roiling stomach. But he knew that she knew.

Her white kimono was stained, the brown dirt of war, and then Kenshin was thinking how he’d wash it carefully, scrub the stains away: his quiet victory. A small smile made it to his lips, but even that hurt.

Without another word, Kaoru took his arm and draped it around her shoulders, letting his weight fall against her. She was warm, and real. Alive.

She was his reminder of everything he had always hoped for, and now, she was his _future_.


End file.
